Transcontinental Racer and Journalist Brock Yates Passes Away at 82

Today we’re sad to announce that Brock Yates, prolific journalist, broadcaster, and high-speed protester, has passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. Brock Yates Jr. announced the news via Facebook on October 5, 2016: “Today, after suffering with Alzheimer’s for the last 12 years, my father finally succumbed,” Yates Jr. wrote. “He touched many lives, but sadly no more.”

There’s almost no end to Yates’ reach in this automotive world, but if you’ve looked at a speed limit sign with ire or shook your head at Detroit’s self-inflicted maladies, he was your hero. For four decades he carved his own style of automotive journalism in the pages of Car and Driver, with the inked fire bringing him to create the inaugural Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea-Memorial Trophy Dash (which Yates referred to as the Cannonball Baker) to protest the impending 55 mph national speed limit while celebrating the advent of the American Interstate highway system, then just 16 years into the construction.

I hate to take another swipe at the swaying props that are holding this society. Everywhere somebody is protesting about something, defying the laws of the land while the establishment seems to burrow deeper into its bunkers in defense. But it appears to be the only course. If the movements of automobiles can be monitored and controlled (as with goodies like VASCAR and ORBIS) we are a long way down the road to 1984. Therefore, this mindless government urge to make us safe from ourselves can, in the long haul, lead to an electronic nightmare whereby you can’t buy five gallons of gas or run a half-mile over the speed limit without ringing a gong in the Big Mutha computer in Washington. — Car and Driver, 1971

The first reconnaissance run of the transcontinental route was first completed with his son, Yates Jr.; fellow Car and Driver editor Steve Smith; and friend Jim Williams in a 360ci Dodge Sportsman Van in May of 1971. Months later, he returned with legend Dan Gurney in a modified Sonoco blue Ferrari Daytona, using smart driving and a big fuel cell to run from New York to Los Angeles in 35 hours, 53 minutes — a time that, while shaved over the years to 26 hours and 28 minutes by Alex Roy, is still impressive in today’s world of 210-million American drivers and reaffirming of his motivation to chase the transcontinental record. While Yates’ Cannonball Baker ended in 1979, a myriad of spin-off runs, like the U.S. Express and today’s Cannonball Run (though more of a playboy’s vacation than a true quest for seconds and minutes across the country), sprouted throughout the decades, with untold numbers of copycats and successors chasing the now-romantic New York-to-LA record.

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1981’sCannonball Run was written by Yates, with the infamous 55 mph speed limit sign dead-center in the film’s poster. Legends like Burt Reynolds, Jackie Chan, Farrah Fawcett, Roger Moore, Dom DeLuise, Jack Elam, Dean Martin, Sammie Davis Jr., and Peter Fonda; plus Yates cameoed as the race’s organizer. While it wasn’t an exact recreation of any one race, the tales of mischief and speed were deeply rooted in the outlaw transcontinental race. In fact, the 1971 Dodge Ambulance raced by Reynolds, Fawcett, DeLuise and Elam in the film was the same Bill Mitchell-modified, Dick Landy 440 Dodge ambulancethat Yates ran in 1979’s Cannonball Baker.

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The Cannonball Baker races defined the format for Yates’ One-Lap of America, where a maverick group of racers and speed-addicts could run across the United States with a different race track every day in a series of time-trials, which was the seed of our HOT ROD Drag Week format. Starting in 1984, the race would be the legitimized version of the Cannonball Baker, with speed limits dutifully respected — or so the story goes.

Lastly, you couldn’t keep a writer like Yates in the narrow columns and capped pages of a magazine: he had far too much to say, too many stories to revive, and too much wisdom to disseminate. He authored over a dozen books, ranging from the seedier histories of NASCAR and the Indy 500 to the secrets and stories behind the Cannonball Baker’s early days.

Yates steadfastly pushed the limits of automotive culture and journalism, and his writing reminded us that while the world seems to be falling apart, there’s still something that can be done about it, even if it’s an unorthodox, high-speed solution.

The lights will go out for all of us at some point or another, but unless there are race drivers, astronauts, test pilots, mountain climbers, and others prepared to make the supreme sacrifice in the name of the raw, hell-fire defiance of the odds, there is a legitimate concern that all of society, free of risk and snuggled in bed, will be so stricken with fear that no one will be brave enough even to reach for the light switch. In the words of E.M. Cioran, “An individual dies when he shrinks from both rash plans and rash acts, when instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being, cowers within it, takes refuge there: a metaphysics of regression, a retreat to the primordial.” — Car and Driver, 2000

Pictured in the lead image is Frank “Duffy” Livingstone’s Eliminator, which Yates purchased in 1996 and wrote about in HOT ROD.